World Party - World Cafe Live, Philadelphia, PA, 5-30-2014

I had been keeping an eye out for good live recordings from the British band World Party. Until recently, they'd been very few and far between. But a few months ago (as I write this in November 2022) my musical associate Lil Panda posted this soundboard recording. So now I want to share it here too. It's a drum-free acoustic performance, although lead singer and songwriter Kurt Wallinger is backed by a couple other musicians on guitar and keyboards.

World Party has had a strange history. They proceeded on the normal band path from 1986 to 2000, regularly putting out albums and having some hit singles. But in 2001, Wallinger had a brain aneurysm which resulted in serious medical trouble. He had to suspend all musical activity for the next five years, derailing his musical career. Since then, World Party hasn't released any new studio albums. However, in 2012, the five disc box set "Arkeology" was released, containing lots of new and old songs. The band toured some until 2015, but everything seems to have stopped since then.

A 2013 concert was recorded and released as the live album "World Party - Live." However, it must be exceedingly rare, because I've never come across it. However, I have seen the track list, and it's almost exactly the same as this show.

The sound quality is excellent. But I did make a couple of tweaks to the bootleg. For one, the vocals were often quiet during the banter between songs, so I frequently boosted those. The other is that I trimmed some dead air between songs, such as the tuning of guitars. 

There's been some controversy about when this concert took place. When Lil Panda posted this on the Internet a few months ago, he listed three different dates in different parts of his post. It is known World Party played at this location on May 30, 2014, so I'm going with that date unless information that contradicts that emerges.

This album is an hour and 34 minutes long.

01 talk (World Party)
02 Waiting Such a Long Time (World Party)
03 Message in a box (World Party)
04 talk (World Party)
05 Is It Like Today (World Party)
06 talk (World Party)
07 Everybody's Falling in Love (World Party)
08 talk (World Party)
09 What Does It Mean Now (World Party)
10 When the Rainbow Comes (World Party)
11 talk (World Party)
12 She's the One (World Party)
13 Love Street (World Party)
14 What is Love About (World Party)
15 God on My Side (World Party)
16 talk (World Party)
17 Call Me Up (World Party)
18 talk (World Party)
19 Sweet Soul Dream (World Party)
20 talk (World Party)
21 Vanity Fair (World Party)
22 talk (World Party)
23 Who R You (World Party)
24 talk (World Party)
25 Ship of Fools (World Party)
26 talk (World Party)
27 Is It Too Late (World Party)
28 talk (World Party)
29 Mystery Girl (World Party)
30 Way Down Now (World Party)
31 talk (World Party)

https://www.imagenetz.de/kBKP9

I couldn't find any good photos of World Party and/or Wallinger from around 2014. The closest I could get was the photo used on the cover here, which is from a concert at SXSW in Austin, Texas, in 2006.